The Dead Can Dance
by Sorrel
Summary: Jack pays a visit to the Jackson household. JackDaniel, implied OT4. AU.


**The Dead Can Dance.**

* * *

When Jack knocked on Daniel's door, he only paused for a second before turning the unlocked handle and going inside. The music inside was turned up seriously high, the techno stuff that Sam loved, and if Daniel wasn't working, she'd drag him out of his office and into the empty space in the middle of his big living room and bump and grind, laughing in time with the beat. If they were dancing, they wouldn't mind him coming in (not that they ever did) and even if it was just Sam listening, they wouldn't hear the knock. Even Teal'c, who had a freakish sense of who was about to invade Daniel's space, wouldn't notice unless he was right next to the door.

They weren't dancing. Sam was sprawled out on her stomach on the couch, typing away at the laptop, cursing occasionally when she failed to hit the keys. Teal'c was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the fireplace, uncaring of the heat that flickered over his skin, looking serene despite the noise as the firelight flickered over the gold seal on his forehead and the kohl on the lids of his closed eyes. Daniel was, against all odds, asleep in the insanely oversized armchair that butted up against the couch, his head turned in such a way that it was obvious he'd been watching Sam before he succumbed to exhaustion.

A quiet evening in the Jackson household, even with the noise. It was a good thing Daniel lived so far out from anything vaguely resembling civilization, because if he had neighbors they'd be really pissed right about now.

Sam noticed him first. "Hey, Colonel!" she called cheerfully, abandoning her work to come over and give him a friendly tap on the shoulder, for her as exuberant as a hug. Teal'c's eyes snapped open at the greeting, and a slow, even smile spread across his face when he saw the identity of the visitor. "O'Neill," he said, nodding, and then he closed his eyes once again, comfortable in Jack's presence as he was with few others.

"Daniel's sleeping," Sam told him unnecessarily, as if he wouldn't have noticed that already, as if Daniel wasn't the first person Jack looked for when he entered the room. "He was up all night working on that report."

"What, again?" Jack demanded, then shook his head. Of course, again. Daniel never changed. "I can't believe he can sleep through this crap."

She shrugged, unoffended. "It's not like he isn't used to it."

"I don't think it's possible to get used to this," Jack said, very dry, but she just grinned at him again- very cheerful today, wasn't she?- and went back to her laptop. Jack stayed where he was for a minute, debating the wisdom of waking Daniel to tell him that he was here, but in the end he realized just how much Daniel needed the sleep and went to make dinner instead. Neither Sam nor Teal'c could be trusted with anything breakable or potentially messy, and anyway, Jack was supposed to take care of Daniel. The fact that he took a strange sort of pleasure in it, even after all these years- maybe especially after all these years- didn't change that fact.

Daniel woke anyway, of course, when the luring scent of coffee made its way into the living room, and he stumbled blearily into the kitchen, yawning from his nap and completely unsurprised to see Jack there. "Dinner?" he asked shortly, snagging the cup of coffee Jack had already poured for him, when he'd heard the first sounds of stirring from the living room, where he'd finally gotten Sam to turn off the damn music. He leaned against the counter and just inhaled the scent for a minute, before taking the first wincing sip.

"Just pasta," Jack said. "Nothin' fancy."

"I eat everything, you know that," Daniel said.

"Yeah, I know, but-"

"But you always have to go the extra mile anyway, Jack," Daniel said with his usual accuracy and insight. "'s'okay. What happened today?"

Privately, Jack sometimes hated how ridiculously observant Daniel could be. He was the most isolationist man Jack had ever met in some respects, and yet he met with dozens of people a day sometimes, some of them barely able to communicate. He could read lips, body language, and sometimes your entire personal history, just from looking into your eyes. It was eerie. Then again, everything about him was.

"Just the usual," Jack said. And then he tried on a smile, small and strained as it was. This was Daniel. He could make the effort for Daniel. "Long day, though."

"It always is," Daniel said with a sigh of perfect understanding, and set his coffee cup down before nodding at the sauce that was simmering on the stove. "How long will that take?"

"Little while," Jack said. Daniel smiled, simple and sweet, and moved over to the chair, standing behind it and beckoning, coaxing like he would a skittish animal. As if Jack ever refused him anything.

"Come here, then," he said, and Jack went to the chair, sitting down and letting himself relax in anticipation of that first, magical touch. He wasn't disappointed when Daniel's hands come down on his shoulders, kneading gently, and then more firmly when he got a feel for the muscles. Jack dropped his head forward, inviting the touch further up onto his neck. Christ but he had good hands.

This was why he came here, even when they weren't on assignment, why he drove all the freaking way out to this little cabin in the middle of nowhere where Daniel hung his hat when they weren't continent-hopping. Not for the amazing massage that Daniel always insisted on giving and Jack had eventually stopped trying to turn down, after the first year or so, and not just because of a need to look after the man who was arguably one of the country's national treasures- and certainly the closest thing to a best friend he had or ever would again- but because of this, this sense of peace he got here in Daniel's kitchen, with Daniel's hands on him, and Daniel's low voice murmuring in his ear about the harvest in an Ethiopia, fishing in the coastal village of Telegraph Cove, the unseasonably warm weather in Finland. Little details of little human lives that almost no one cared about but Daniel, who welcomed everyone to his door and his heart. Even scarred, suicidal men who wanted nothing but to be left alone, stuck babysitting a man who talked to thin air. Jack hadn't wanted to be here, the first time he'd met Daniel, thinner and with longer hair and wider eyes, but the same man, his sense of self buried deep in his veins and marrow.

Things changed.

Sometimes he wondered why he didn't just pack up his lonely apartment and move in here, with his team. With Daniel. There was a spare room that always had all the covers made up, kept there for Sam and Teal'c and anyone else who came to Daniel's door and wasn't ready to leave, but it was just a matter of courtesy. Sam and Teal'c didn't need it any more than any of those lonely, ragged visitors did, and Jack was the only one who slept between the cool, soft sheets, slept there more often than he slept in his own hard, narrow bed. After all these years, he might as well have carved his name on the headboard, no more it would have made it his.

But he couldn't. He came here most every night, now, a grudging sense of duty changed to grudging respect changed to friendship changed to something more. Family, perhaps. Sam and Teal'c lived here as surely as Daniel, and they were just as happy to see Jack, to listen to his troubles and share his burdens when their shoulders could take the burden. They were his team, all of them. But Daniel… Daniel was his reason, his meaning, the axis around which his world turned. If he lived here, how long would he stay in that spare room, how long would his head rest on a pillow curved to fit his head? The Air Force frowned on that sort of thing, though Jack grew more and more uncaring of the Air Force as time marched inexorably on. Even so, it was a step he wasn't yet ready to take, a piece of himself he wasn't yet ready to give up, not even to Daniel, who held his fragile, beating hard in his steady hands, who never faltered, never held too hard or too loose. Daniel could be trusted. Jack wasn't sure if he knew how, even now, after all this.

Daniel was precious to him. More than that, Daniel was precious to everyone. People came from all over the world to see him, to tell him their troubles, because he was the only one who could listen. They came, and talked, and he listened with his sweet smile and deceptively vague eyes and told them it would be alright, and they believed him because he was Daniel, and he could make it so by sheer force of will. He listened, when no one else could hear, and he was loved by all, the world 'round.

Daniel was the most powerful psychic in the Western world, possibly the most powerful in the world. The dead came to him, and he could see them all, no matter how faint their hold on the living world, and he could touch them, if they weren't too far gone, even the ones who'd felt nothing since the day they died.

Sometimes, if they spent enough time around him, they gained strength from him, the strength of will their own deaths had sapped from them, and they could do more. Enough to go home to their loved ones, grieving them, and hold a pen or brush long enough to get a message across, that they were there, and happy. Sometimes they became strong enough that Jack could see them, too- Jack, who'd never seen a ghost in his life until he'd almost become one of them, and only Daniel's mouth on his, forcing breath into his lungs, had brought him back. Everything had changed that day, in more ways than one.

Sam and Teal'c, though, he'd always been able to see. Almost everyone could, when they wanted to be seen. They were the strongest of the ghosts, constantly by Daniel's side, a large dark blur and a smaller golden one to untrained eyes. Daniel had been present for both their deaths, and through him they had found their true purpose- Teal'c, in protecting a man who, despite being surrounded by death, had no concept of the fragility of his own mortal life, and Sam, her brilliant work cut tragically short in an explosion, continuing it from beyond the grave, with Daniel's help. And later, with the final addition of Jack, they became a team, traveling around the world in two first-class seats, visiting graves of every imaginable size, location, and description. Thousands of years of history lost, regained piece by slow piece by Daniel's painstaking efforts. And Jack followed him wherever he lead, because he wanted to, because he could do nothing else- and also because the Air Force told him to, because someone, somewhere, thought that Daniel Jackson's work was valuable enough to protect.

It hadn't been that way at first. They'd thought he could speak to the recently dead, the assassinated politicians, the terrorists who'd died rather than speak. Daniel had refused. He'd been taken into military custody. He'd walked out less than six hours later, the wind stirring his hair from the forceful movements of a dozen angry ghosts, who'd summoned the strength to rip apart his cell rather than leave him caged. Teal'c had been there even then, leading the charge, huge and dark and angry.

No one tried to bend Daniel to their will again, not after that.

"Hey," Daniel whispered, and it was only then that Jack realized that Daniel's hands had stilled, minutes ago, and that he'd practically fallen asleep through his half-dreamed thoughts. "Dinner can keep. Go get some sleep, Jack."

"Dinner can't damn well keep," Jack grumbled.

"Well, that's why we sometimes call it breakfast," Daniel replied. "Seriously. Your bed is ready. It always is."

Jack closed his eyes in pain, or joy. He couldn't tell the difference sometimes, around Daniel.

"It's not my bed, Daniel."

"You know it is," Daniel said. "Your clothes aren't in the closet yet, but the bed is definitely yours."

Jack's heart caught at the simple confidence of that statement- _yet._ As if it was a only a matter of time before Jack was in his life fully, instead of holding back. It couldn't possibly be that simple, Jack, thought. He can't possibly know me that well.

But he did. He always had. That was why he was who he was, and why he loved the way he did. Completely, unreservedly, and patiently. He already knew that Jack was his. He could afford to wait.

"I can pack a bag tomorrow," Jack said. Because really, how could he not?

"That'd be good," Daniel said absently. His hands were still resting on Jack's shoulders, though he hadn't resumed the massage. "We've got a few days before our next mission. Time to unpack."

Yeah, Jack thought. He knows me that well. And this was absolutely inevitable, from the first time he'd met Daniel, from the first time he'd heard his name. Maybe from the moment he was born.

"Sure," he said, and when Daniel finally, finally stopped touching him, Jack was able to get out of the chair and stretch elaborately. "Sweet dreams," he said, and left the kitchen as quickly as he could, waving to Sam and Teal'c as he passed through the living room.

It took much longer for him to fall asleep, and when he did his dreams were strange and disjointed. He woke, stiff from remaining in one position all night, to bright sunlight- mid-morning, maybe- and the faint beat of music from the living room. Sam was at it again, he thought. Not techno this time, but some of that stuff they tried to pass off as rock music these days.

He walked down the hall in just his jeans and stood in the doorway, again, like always, watching Sam and Daniel dance. She was in front of him, leaning back against him, his hands on her hips guiding her as her head tipped back on her shoulder and she smiled at him. Teal'c wasn't dancing, but he was standing only a foot away, an unimaginable breach of space, intensely personal, and he was nodding his head to the beat. And smiling.

Jack watched them, and felt the ache in his chest, the one that never quite went away, double. Because he couldn't walk over there and join them. They were his team, but he couldn't touch them, not in the way he needed to make sure they were really his. The press of their fingers felt like cool rain against his skin. And Daniel, who could touch anyone… At this moment, with the two other people who loved him and shared his life, he looked ridiculously happy, relaxed and a little loopy with sleep deprivation and so damn sweet Jack couldn't take his eyes off him.

He didn't belong there, Jack thought. Not yet. But he knew, just as he'd known for years, ever since the crack of a gun had shattered him, lost him the one thing that he held most precious, the one face he'd never seen, the one ghost who'd never come through that door-

He knew that the dead could dance. And one day, he'd dance with them.

He was kinda looking forward to it.


End file.
